Carl Andre, John Wesley "Serial Forms"
Mitchell-Innes & Nash (534 W 26th St.)
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New York- Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents "Serial Forms". The exhibition will include paintings and works on paper by John Wesley from the 1970s and 1980s and Carl Andre sculpture from the 1970s through the 1990s. Serial Forms juxtaposes works by these two artists that investigate repetition and modularity.
The exhibition poses a relationship of visual analogy between Wesley’s paintings and Andre’s sculpture, looking at how each artist uses systematic approaches to different materials and subject matter. Less than a decade apart in age, the two are affiliated with widely disparate movements in post-War art, namely Pop and Minimalism. While Wesley is known for brightly-colored, cartoon-like erotic narratives, Andre’s work is emphatically concrete, excised of any representation or narrative. The two nonetheless share a commitment to paring away all non-essential information to arrive at a final form.
In his introduction to John Wesley’s survey show at the Fondazione Prada, curator Germano Celant discussed Wesley’s exposure to Minimalism and its “universe of elementary forms…arising from reductive, geometric procedures that tended to reduce art to its primary and minimal materials and forms…” While Andre’s “primary materials” were lumber and copper, Wesley’s were images: humans, animals, landscapes reduced to flat, graphic shapes in a limited color palette.
Both artists have permanent installations at Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX. John Wesley has had numerous retrospectives including Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (travelled to Portikus, Frankfurt); PS1/MoMA, Harvard University Art Galleries at the Fogg Museum; and Fondazione Prada at the 2009 Venice Biennale. His work is in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Kunstmuseum, Basel. He is represented by Fredericks & Freiser, NY.
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Schedule
from May 31, 2012 to July 14, 2012